Does this landscape look like a specific location? What gives you that impression?

Do the landscape and/or other elements in the painting seem idealized (more perfect than reality)? What gives you that impression?

Describe how this painting illustrates the impact of man on nature. Be as specific as possible.

How has the artist organized the painting’s elements—the landscape, the cottage, and the figures—to lead our eye through the image? How this composition help to tell a story?

2. Watch the video

The video “Wilderness, settlement, and the forming of an American identity” is only six minutes in length. Ideally, the video should provide an active rather than a passive classroom experience. You can pause the video to respond to student questions, to underscore or develop issues, to define vocabulary, or to look closely at parts of the painting that are being discussed. Key points, a self-diagnostic quiz, and downloadable high-resolution photographs with details of The Hunter’s Return are provided to support the video.

3. Read about the painting and its historical context

Steeped in European theories of art, Cole insisted on the “great and serious” calling of the artist. Unlike other early landscapists in America, he reacted strongly against any notion that his pictures should be literal transcriptions of what the eye sees. He believed instead in a “higher style of landscape,” a way of imbuing the landscape with “moral and imaginative” power. He achieved that by sorting through and then combining sketches made outdoors into a built “composition” at his studio. Landscape composition for Cole was never a “dead imitation” of nature, but an imaginative leap into those “invisible” meanings that lie unseen on the other side of nature. He proclaimed that, “If the imagination is shackled, and nothing is described but what we see, seldom will anything truly great be produced in either Painting or Poetry.” (page 254)

Most Americans were busy settling nature in the nineteenth century, too busy in fact to look up from their work of extending the nation from “sea to shining sea.” When they did look up, they found themselves surrounded by a chorus of voices exhorting them to labor less and to seek meaning in the landscape instead. Writers like Emerson and Thoreau called upon mid-nineteenth-century audiences to treat nature as a treasure. The seemingly untouched quality of the nation’s wildernesses distinguished the United States from Europe. The landscape came increasingly to embody what Americans most valued in themselves: an “unstoried” past, an ”Adamic” freedom, an openness to the future, a fresh lease on life. In time, Americans came to think of themselves as “nature’s nation.” And yet one of the paradoxes of American history, as painters like Thomas Cole noted, lay in the unresolved tension between the subduing of the wilderness and the honoring of it. That tension is still alive with us today, in the competing voices of environmentalists and advocates of development.” (page 241)

4. Discussion questions

In your neighborhood, do commercial, industrial spaces balance or overwhelm nature (or the opposite)? Do you think you would have reacted the way Cole did when he saw nature being transformed by man in the mid-nineteenth century, or would you have welcomed that change?

5. Research question

Opening a newspaper today, you are likely to read about political tensions regarding the development of government-controlled land for oil, gas, and coal—the energy needed to fuel the modern United States economy. Using one example, describe the views of both environmentalists and those advocating development.

How does this look different from the typical image of an American flag?

What words would you use to describe the man in the painting? Which details of the figure lead to your choice of words.

What do you think the man’s relationship is to the flag? Why?

Look closely at the surface of the painting. How did the artist construct this image using paint and pencil? What choices did the artist make?

2. Watch the video

The video “Identity, Civil Rights, and the American Flag” which features Benny Andrew’s Flag Day is only six minutes in length. Ideally, the video should provide an active rather than a passive classroom experience. Please feel free to stop the video to respond to student questions, to underscore or develop issues, to define vocabulary, or to look closely at parts of the painting that are being discussed. Key points, a self-diagnostic quiz, and high resolution photographs with details of Flag Day are provided to support the video.

3. Read about the painting and its historical context

Actually, in my case, racism was just one of the many problems I had. I had a class problem, too, you see. My family (was) probably one of the poorest, especially when we were sharecroppers in the country—and I’m just talking about Morgan County now. We were probably as poor as could be considered in terms of money or any kind of things like that….We also had a problem of living in the country; we were not included in the tokenism thing of going to high school, for example. So there were so many things—it was not just to fight being a black person in a white society; it was also fight being a poor person in a total society—being both black and white.

This quote from Andrews reminds us that skin color is just one of many reasons that people in the United States have suffered discrimination: class, gender, sexual orientation, and religious and cultural background have also often been grounds for prejudice. Decades after the great civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, and the LGBTQ community continue to struggle for visibility, equal rights, and opportunity. The Black Lives Matter movement is an important reminder that this struggle (and specifically the violence done to African Americans) continues. New types of discrimination, for instance, against Muslim Americans, are on the rise.

In this painting, Andrews intentionally avoided using the highly polished technique that was understood as “good” painting. Beginning in the nineteenth century, artists like van Gogh painted in a style that could be seen as naive and childlike in an effort to create a sense of the immediate and the personal and to heighten the sense of sincerity. There are many reasons why Andrews may have chosen to paint in this non-academic style and it is possible that Andrew’s felt this style was well suited to the political events that were then taking place.

The Civil Rights Movement in the United States made great progress in the 1950s and 1960s with judicial decisions such as Brown v. Board of Education Topeka (1954), legislative victories like the Equal Pay Act (1963), the Civil Rights Act (1964) and the Voting Rights Act (1965). Other efforts, such as the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) fell short and were not enacted.

The flag was an especially potent symbol during this period. For example, in 1971 John Kerry, a Vietnam War veteran and later congressman and presidential nominee, spoke on behalf of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War before the Senate Committee of Foreign Relations, and said this:

We saw firsthand how monies from American taxes were used for a corrupt dictatorial regime. We saw that many people in this country had a one-sided idea of who was kept free by the flag, and blacks provided the highest percentage of casualties. We saw Vietnam ravaged equally by American bombs and search and destroy missions…

Despite the landmark legislations listed above, after centuries of slavery and discrimination, it should come as no surprise that people of color continued to struggle for visibility, equality, and a greater voice in American society. Benny Andrews, an African American artist who grew up a sharecropper’s son in Georgia, had firsthand knowledge of the Jim Crow south, along with the social and economic structures that enabled racial inequities to persist. Moving to New York in 1958, he found that similar types of discrimination were also common in galleries and museums, restricting African Americans’ access to the art world and hindering their careers.

These exclusions were made clear in The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 1969 exhibition “Harlem On My Mind,” which featured large, wall-sized photographs of the neighborhood over the first half of the twentieth century. Organized in the manner of an ethnographic display, the show did not include any painting or sculpture at all, and rejected the participation of Harlem residents themselves in the planning of the show. This controversial show led Andrews and others to establish the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition, a group that fought for museums to include more by African American artists and curators. Significant discrimination in the art world continues to exist today.

These concerns of visibility, equality, and voice are present in Andrews’ Flag Day from 1966. By placing the figure at the center of his composition, Andrews draws our eye toward him and his engagement with the American flag. Yet, the relationship between the man and the flag remains unclear. It is a complicated depiction that not only reflects the artist’s own struggles for recognition, but one that relates to broader questions of racial, national, and individual identity during the height of civil rights activism in the United States.

4. Discussion questions

The 1960s was an era of protest by many different groups, many of which used art in their campaigns. For an artist involved in activist causes, why do you think Benny Andrews left the meaning of Flag Day so unclear?

Can art be an effective tool in tackling large social or political issues? What are some pros and cons of using works of art to promote change.

Think of other examples of how symbols (such as the American flag) are used and transformed in order to make a political point.

5. Research questions

The flag of United States serves as a potent visual symbol of national identity, and many controversies have revolved around its use as a sign of protest and political critique. Like Benny Andrews, other artists such as Jasper Johns, Dread Scott, Faith Ringgold, Sonja Clark, David Hammonds, and Barbara Kruger have created provocative artworks focused on the flag. Compare and contrast two of these works — how are they similar? How are they different?

What is Flag Day? Why do you think Andrews chose this as the title for the painting?